Narratives, reflective processes and professional practice: contributions towards research and training

This study offers methodological contributions for research and educational projects involving the use of narratives and reflective processes. Based on a study of professional practice, written narratives from clinical sessions within Occupational Therapy were analyzed using the categories proposed by Hatton and Smith (1995), to show the process of reflecting on actions: descriptive narration, reflective description, dialog reflection and critical reflection. The results presented in this paper concern the details involved in putting this methodology into operation, especially regarding the format (grammatical structure) and the content (manifested reflection) of each category. In this respect, complementation of the work of Hatton and Smith was sought by providing better systematization for using these categories.